Taste Alberta: Chef’s menu practises what he preaches

Edmonton students dine on beef raised on a Millet farm

These beef patties for the King’s University College cafeteria were made with beef from an organic farm near Millet.

Photograph by: Shaughn Butts
, Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - Students in the cafeteria at King’s University College may not realize it, but when they’re dining on some of the beef dishes prepared by chef Michel Lamontagne, they’re getting a lesson in environmental stewardship.

Lamontagne, owner of Choices Catering Services, which runs the food services at King’s in southeast Edmonton, buys much of his meat from a small, family-run farm in Millet, about an hour’s drive south of the province’s capital city.

The payoff is two-fold, says Lamontagne, who trained as a chef in his native Quebec before moving to Alberta three decades ago.

On one hand, the beef, raised without antibiotics or hormones, is a joy to the palate; on the other, the short drive between the farm and King’s reduces the product’s carbon footprint.

“It’s sustainable,” says Lamontagne.

The move to serve local beef sits well with King’s, too. The Christian university follows the Bible’s message to keep the planet healthy, says Michael Ferber, director of King’s environmental studies program.

“In the Christian scriptures, there’s an ethic to take care of the environment,” says Ferber.

Rob VanWeerden, director of facilities at King’s, has spearheaded a number of earth-friendly projects, including using solar heat to warm some common areas and classrooms.

“The whole thing comes from a biblical perspective to steward the earth, to treat it well,” says VanWeerden. “So we do a lot of sustainability-oriented projects to reduce consumptions on electricity, natural gas, all sorts of stuff.”

Putting local beef on the menu reinforces that, says Ferber.

“At King’s we think it’s very important to live the things that we teach and it’s pretty exciting to have staff that are recognizing that and are not simply enthusiastic about sustainability, but are willing to put some muscle behind it.”

Craig Cameron is the 23-year-old farmer who supplies Lamontagne with the meat. He and his wife, Miriam, operate CWC Maines, where they run a herd of about 70 beef animals.

Cameron delivers wrapped, frozen meat portions, in orders of one-quarter, one-half or the whole animal, to customers in and around Millet and Edmonton.

The meat is available in three varieties: regular, lean and ultra-lean.

“We wanted to focus on the local, natural market where we could provide healthy, low-environmental-impact food to people,” says Cameron, who holds a Bachelor of Science, majoring in environmental studies and minoring in chemistry, from King’s.

Cameron’s operation is located on his parents’ grain farm, Ainslie Acres. Growing up, he learned a lot from his father, Danny, about producing healthy crops.

“As long as my dad’s been in farming he’s always had the philosophy that if we don’t need the excess fungicides or insecticides on the crops then there’s no point in using them and affecting the natural systems,” Cameron says.

Ainslie Acres is converting its fields to organic. Right now, 40 of its 404 hectares have been certified.

“Before we even understood the whole organic side, the philosopy was to maintain good microbes in the soil and good microbes in the plants to keep the system healthy, rather than trying to fight off all the bad stuff,” says Cameron.

He carries the practice over to his beef.

“We don’t use any hormones or antibiotics on the animals, we can get similar growth without having to do anything like that.

“We give them natural products that just help with the bugs inside their stomach and that helps them grow in a completely natural way.”

Those are some of the reasons chef Lamontagne likes the beef. During last year’s E-coli scare he was comfortable serving it to staff and students at King’s.

“The King’s community right away wanted to know that our beef was safe and, since the only beef we had at that time was the (natual) beef, we were completely in the clear.”

But just as important to Lamontagne is flavour — and Cameron’s product does not disappoint.

The beef is tender and lean and bursting with taste, says Lamontagne.

“It’s certainly better flavour,” Lamontagne says. “It’s always better than beef from the store. It’s allowed us to serve very lean beef and it’s more interesting because each (cut) lends a different flavour.”

Cameron hears comments like that regularly from his customers.

“Lots of them like the taste,” he says.

And they like other things about the beef, says Cameron, as he stands on a bright, cold morning among his cows and their calves, a raw wind rippling the fur on his border collie’s back.

“They like to know where it’s coming from, that’s a big thing. They want something that they know that it’s raised in a proper manner and that it’ll have no hormones or antibiotics. They want to know that it’s close and that we’re not trucking it for thousands of miles and creating emissions.”

He would get no argument there from King’s professor Micheal Ferber.

“We have become so disconnected from the earth — you know, our food comes from Safeway — so we’ve kind of lost touch with how important taking care of the planet is,” Ferber says.

“When you think of the amount of energy and resources that go into transporting food it can almost get ridiculous to consider what we’re doing when some of these things we can grow locally.”

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